Purchasing Power

Australia is the sixth-largest country (2.9m square miles) on earth, just a tad smaller than the contiguous United States (3.1m). They are a little short on people (22.8m), which comes handy, since they dig up their entire country and sell the dirt to China. Australia has a remarkably low government dept-to-GDP ratio (29% ), low unemployment (5.2%), a moderate budget deficit (3.4% of GDP) and moderate inflation. However, Australia has been running current account deficits of up to 6% of GDP for more than 50 years. The “mates”, until recently, didn’t like to save, hence most investment has to be financed by borrowing from foreigners. I was curious as to how much of the success was due to exporting dirt to China. From the Australian Bureau of Statistics you get the following data about their top-10 export markets (accounting for 82% of all exports)...

While Americans were purchasing stuff they don't need with money they don't have to impress people they don't like in the holiday week (but making sure to keep those tags off - you don't get record gift returns if you damage the product or rip the tags off), it appears they did so by walking everywhere. Either that or when it comes to determining real consumer purchasing power, the real answer lies at the pump. According to MasterCard, U.S. gasoline demand sank 14 percent from the prior week to the lowest level in more than seven years of records, as reported by Bloomberg. "Drivers bought 8.16 million barrels a day of gasoline in the week ended Dec. 30, down from 9.46 million the week before, according to MasterCard’s SpendingPulse report. MasterCard’s data goes back to July 2004." So we have just had the lowest gas demand week on record, and that's with gas still at relatively low prices considering what has happened with WTI. One wonders what will happen to end demand when prices finally trickle through. Or perhaps this is all just the central planners' insidious plan to get everyone in America to buy Government Motors magically exploding electrical fire hazard bumper cars? The people demand to know.

If there is one lesson to be learned from the Japanese experience with deleveraging over the past few decades it’s that deleveraging cycles have there own special rhythm of reflationary and deflationary interludes.  Pretty simple thinking as balance sheet deleveraging by definition cannot be a short term process given the prior decades required to build up the leverage accumulated in any economic/financial system.  If deleveraging were a short term process, it would play out as a massive short term depression.  And clearly any central bank would act to disallow such an outcome, exactly has been the case not only in Japan over the last few decades, but now also in the US and the Eurozone.  We just need to remember that this is a dance.  There is an ebb and flow to the greater (generational) deleveraging cycle.  Just as leveraging up was not a linear process, neither will the process of deleveraging be linear.  Why bring this larger picture cycle rhythm up right now?  The recent price volatility we’ve seen in assets that can be characterized as offering purchasing power protection within the context of a global central banking community debasing currencies as their preferred method of reflation for now, specifically recent the price volatility of gold.

2011 was an abysmal year for the global insurance industry, which had to cover yet another enormous increase in damages from natural disasters. Unknown to most casual observers is the fact that during the past few decades the frequency of weather-related disasters (floods, fires, storms) has been growing at a much faster pace than geological disasters (such as earthquakes). This spread between the two types of insurable losses has moved so strongly that it prompted Munich Re to note in a late 2010 letter that weather-related disasters due to wind have doubled and flooding events have tripled in frequency since 1980. The world now has to contend with a much higher degree of risk from weather and climate volatility, and this has broad-reaching implications. And critically, it has a particular impact on food.

The now traditional ramp in all risk assets continues to underperform the increasing fund flow into gold: a phenomenon we last disclosed after the most recent FOMC meeting. In other words, the S&P expressed in gold is down for the day. Which basically means that even with today's joke of a market move, the purchasing power lost as a result of now global currency debasement is not offset by some high beta name surging to all time highs. Even basicalier, it means that gold continues to do better than stocks every time there is a central bank intervention. And there will be much more central bank intervention before the location of the next world war release party is officially disclosed. Basicaliest: stocks ramp, gold ramps more. Nuf said.

Has it maybe ever occurred to any of our glorious regulators that the reason why nobody has any faith left in the stock market, which has become just a teetering house of cards, supported constantly by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, is due to precisely the kinds of totally nonsensical ramps in the market just as the one we are witnessing right now? Consdering that the economic data could hardly be any worse, how is anyone supposed to trade this complete binary gibberish? We realize there are another ten minutes in trading, which means the S&P will likely make another valiant attempt at 1,150 just to get nothing but more algos to do the buying once limits are triggered. Whether it will succeed is irrelevant, as nobody trades any more, precisely for this reason. And the end result will be merely another flash crash, that will drive absolutely everyone out, up to and including the last few vacuum tubes remaining.

The only thing that matters today is the ongoing drubbing of the USD, which has just surged to 1.345 to the Euro, even as the Yen meanders this morning but continues to gradually push higher post overnight lows. Expect angry statements from the ECB, and promises to do more of the same failed thing. In the meantime, the middle class' purchasing power was once crushed. The Fed's transfer of wealth from savers to debtors continues. Which is the only thing that matters to stock.

Even as the government has taken on leadership roles in virtually every segment of the financial and corporate arena, and we see the impact of excess central bank liquidity every single day not in pass-thru lending by the major commercial banks, but in the price of Amazon stock which is now trading at Strong Conviction Lunatic Buy levels, there is yet one segment that the government is powerless to manipulate, no matter how hard CNBC tries (with its constantly declining audience each month the administration could have chosen a more popular medium to brainwash the masses). And, unfortunately for Obama, it is the one segment that is critical to this economy improving: the US consumer, which until recently accounted for 75% of America's GDP, and by implication, almost a third of world GDP.

The recurring problem: continued massive credit contraction - seen every month not only in the government's G.19 report, but direct from the horse's mouth: the big credit card companies. The most recent picture is indeed gloomy. After total unused credit card lines peaked at $4.7 trillion in Q2 2008, the number has plunged to $3.5 trillion: a $1.2 trillion evaporation of consumer purchasing power. The flipside- utilization rates continue to rise as the actual amount borrowed on credit cards is also declining, but a much slower pace. According to the FDIC's just released report, there was $784 billion borrowed between credit card loans and securitization receivables. The U.S. consumer is not only retrenching, but banks continue to limit credit card purchases, which further constrains spending, creating a vicious deleveraging, and thus deflationary, loop.

"In terms of purchasing power parity, the dollar seems a tad undervalued these days, but that does not mean it will soon appreciate...Using a real exchange rate to judge whether the dollar is overvalued or undervalued, however, requires some reference point at which purchasing power parity holds. Such a point should also be consistent with a global balance-of-payments configuration that is sustainable. Good luck finding that!...Let’s hope the exchange market does not see something that the rest of us are missing." - Cleveland Fed

This is the chart they don't want you to see: the purchasing power of the dollar over the past 76 years has declined by 94%. And based on current monetary and fiscal policy, we have at least another 94% to go. The only question is whether this will be achieved in 76 months this time.

Hat tip Teddy

This is the chart they don't want you to see: the purchasing power of the dollar over the past 76 years has declined by 94%. And based on current monetary and fiscal policy, we have at least another 94% to go. The only question is whether this will be achieved in 76 months this time.

Hat tip Teddy